


The Tin Woman and The Fairy Queen

by LadyGretchen



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dr Nyarlathotep, Electrocution, F/F, One Shot, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 16:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGretchen/pseuds/LadyGretchen
Summary: As incredible as it may have seemed with hindsight, her home land barely noticed when Sophie Blake was spirited away by the Doctor.The is the tale of how that happened, of where Sophie went, and what she learned.And of what she did when she returned.





	The Tin Woman and The Fairy Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this'll need a bit of an explanation. This story was originally submitted for the Doctor Who Unbound Charity Anthology, an anthology of stories where canon could be ignored in favour of various alternative versions of the Doctor. This story was a female doctor story, and with that I suspect I've explained why it didn't make it in: when Chibnall turned out to be more inventive than I gave him credit for, a female Doctor was suddenly not much of an alternative version.
> 
> As it stands, I currently have mixed feelings about this story. On the one hand, in spite of its flaws there is an argument to be made that it is one of the best things I have ever written. On the other, I wrote it before I started to realise that I'm transgender, and as a result it sometimes feels like it was written by a different person to me. I thought about submitting it to the next charity anthology, but since twitter has informed me that the editors of the current Unbound anthology had more than enough grief getting the current one printed I suspect that its going to be a while before an Unbound II charity anthology is proposed.
> 
> And it would be a shame to let Sophie's story go to waste.
> 
> I'm tempted to suggest that this is what the LadyGretchin era of Doctor Who would look like, and whilst I have thought of writing a sequel to it I also suspect that were LadyGretchin to write an era of Doctor Who from scratch it would look somewhat different.
> 
> Instead, I'll let Sophie take you from here...

I have heard it said that once upon a time, 3 wise men built a paradise for their families. The first, with but a wave of his hand, made towers of glittering crystal burst forth from the ground, towering above the sand and smog, and declared that these would house their families. The second man, marched to his forge and days later came back with the first hunting machine: a screeching, howling beast that flew on golden clockwork wings to terrorise and hunt those the wise men had deemed deserving of terror. After all, paradise is worth nothing if open to just anyone. The third man, perhaps the wisest, saw that there was still work to do. And so, from the dead bodies of his enemies and his inferiors, from cold flesh and cold metal, he built a race of servants that would ensure that his family would never have to work again. I don’t know how true this story is. I’ve learnt that history is usually a little more complicated than that. But this paradise did exist, believe it or not.

I burnt it to the ground.

The servants are no longer cowed by the whip and the shock collar, the hunting machines have made prey of their masters. The vengeful hordes of those made to live in the desert and smoke have heard the bells toll for their enemy’s death, and are marching here now. The master’s house does not belong to the master any more.

My name is Sophie Blake, and I did this.

But perhaps I should start from the beginning. I don’t think I would have done this, if I hadn’t met a woman who started a fire in me. A woman who called herself the Doctor...

-

I didn’t have a name back then. I wasn’t really born, wasn’t really alive. I was stitched together in an underground mill, carved crystal and ticking clockwork the thread, a desert woman’s carcass and some spare parts the fabric. Waking to the heaving of pistons and hissing of steam where someone else might have a heart beat. I was sold to an owner, then sold off to another, then another. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between them: I was doing my best to remain numb to the world at the time, so I just remember a blur of impatient commands and snarled remarks and the bite of howling, electric pain from my collar.

The most clear memory I have of an owner is my final owner. A perfectionist, which for him meant he had forged himself into a small mountain of muscle that flowed and struck like a river. For me that meant he was quick with the shock collar. For his profession, things get a little complicated. He ran forges and mills that birthed the hunting machines, and he was always on the look out for a way to make them better. To make them quicker, to make them deadlier, to make it so they could harvest their victims’ bodies to sell off to the mills that made people like me. So when he found the ultimate power source for his machines, he of course organised an expedition to retrieve it.

As he explained it to his fellows: once upon a time, the universe was protected by the Phoenix. She brought life to dead planets, and fought against the forces that would destroy them. Call her a goddess, if you want. Only... there was a War between the gods, and though she didn’t choose a side, she was caught in the crossfire and poisoned. She had a friend who tried to help her: a traveller, who tried to give up his life to heal her... all for naught. The Phoenix and her friend died together. However, slid in the gaps between dimensions, in a spider’s web clinging to our time line, was her tomb. Her corpse and biodata could be seized, and from there? The possibilities of the powers and secrets of a goddess are endless.

And of course, my owner had found a way into her tomb.

-

Needless to say, the expedition went wrong almost immediately. The tomb was a near light-less maze of petrified forests and claustrophobic catacombs. The hunting machine my owner brought with him struggled to move in this environment, and soon gave up completely: made undone as it collapsed into a useless pile of mechanisms and crystals and lifeless exoskeleton. My owner declared it sabotage, and would blame one of his 7 fellows. He would go on to kill 3 of them.

Of course, the destruction of the hunting machine made me the expedition’s first defence against any surprises they met. Perhaps an upgrade from baggage carrier in the abstract, but in practice meant I would face any threat or potential threat alone. The first time the expedition heard a roar, they moved behind me. The second time the roar was closer, so they set up defensive positions: baggage and debris becoming a wall to hide behind. When they heard it a third time, they gave me a lantern and sent me out into the petrified forest in order to find the beast.

They didn’t follow me of course. But as a result, they didn’t see the cave the roars were coming from. They didn’t hear the roars turn into yawns, nor did they see a strange woman in a monk’s robe step out of the cave declaring:

“Oh, do excuse me dear.”

-

How do I start explaining the Doctor?

I doubt I could have explained her then either, and I more or less failed to explain her to my owner as it turned out. Her voice put me in mind of an older woman, full of aristocracy and control, but her face was youthful and her curly hair full of chaotic life. Her brown eyes were deep, reassuring, even loving, but her smile was like that of a demon. And just when I was beginning to grasp what was in front of me, she started again:

“Oh good heavens, where are my manners.” She stepped forward, right hand thrust towards me. “I am the Doctor. How do you do?”

It took me a moment to process this. This was how the owners greeted an equal. The Doctor must have seen my confusion, because her eyes softened, her voice relaxed.

“I’m terribly sorry dear, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I-It’s okay.”

I wasn’t used to getting apologies, but I was learning quickly. I had almost come to the conclusion that this strange woman was no threat until...

That smile. Toothy. Mischievous. Dangerous. I gulped, finding some courage within me, then asked:

“D-Did you sabotage the hunting machine?”

“Is that what they call them?”

“Well... yes. But did you do it?”

“Why that machine was mechanically flawed!” The Doctor’s voice, previously a little dismissive of the subject, had now shifted without warning to outraged and indignant. “That machine was a piece of shoddy craftsmanship and incompetent design! Bound to fall to pieces sooner or later I say. The man who built it should be ashamed of himself.”

The Doctor ended her rant with an annoyed pout. I wasn’t afraid: there was no malice in the Doctor’s anger. I just had no experience or background or understanding of how people work to understand this. It took me a moment to talk again.

“What was wrong with it?”

“It wasn’t immune to sabotage.” With that, the Doctor’s outrage had vanished. That smile had come back. “It’s the fatal flaw of all machines in my experience.”

Once again, I was left with no idea how to respond to this.

“Good heavens, I’m being terribly rude. I haven’t tried asking for your name dear.”

“I don’t have one.”

At this, the Doctor had closed the gap between us, hands over my shoulders, her breath on my face and I found myself lost in her piercing eyes (was it hypnotism? Touch telepathy? Something else?) Her composure had slipped: there was no smile, what began as confusion made way for pity (and was that rage?), then her eyes warmed again. Her composure was back, but gentler this time.

“Would you like a name dear?” One hand moved up to cup my face. “You look like a Sophie in my opinion.”

“I... My owner wouldn’t approve.”

“I doubt he’ll be a problem.”

The Doctor broke eye contact. Her hands slid off my face and shoulders, leaving the shadow of her touch and body heat, and a heart beat later she was striding past me. Another heart beat, and the collar around my neck had fallen to the ground deactivated.

“I expect that they’ll have found what they... think is my friend’s resting place by now. And honestly, I think I’ll have a word with them.”

It wasn’t like I was commanded to follow the Doctor. I was, after all, freer than I had been all my life. And yet... perhaps it was because I didn’t want to disappoint her, or perhaps because I wanted some support, or just because she was the most interesting thing that had happened to me.

But whatever the reason, I felt compelled to follow her.

-

I did ask the Doctor what she was on the first night we spent together, kept warm by thick blankets and her embrace. Stirring from near sleep, this is what I remember her whispering into my ear:

“Once upon a time my dear, in a very scientific Valhalla, lived the fairies: people that thought themselves the kings and queens of time and space. The stars were the fires to their forges, time itself the ocean upon which their ships sailed. Yet many were not happy. They had built their kingdom to escape chaos and death, you see, and so were too scared to really live. Some tried to make the world as boring and lifeless as they were, others went mad and decided to welcome the chaos and death they had escaped. But one fairy queen, the cleverest fairy queen, knew what she had to do. She stole a ship, stole as many faces as she could carry, and set her castle on fire so she wouldn’t think to look back...”

I fell asleep before I could hear the rest of the Doctor’s tale, but I was satisfied with what she gave me. What I heard carries a ring of truth, and I think any more would risk losing that to the Doctor’s strange quirks of memory. I had learned the Doctor’s long term memory was a little questionable: unable to find the gap between what really happened, the metaphor she used to explain it to someone else, and the alibi she made up to cover her trail. Or at least I believe that is the best way to describe it.

How else would you explain the memory of someone who insisted that she regularly shared tea with the Devil, only to insist five minutes later that she had inspired every third depiction of the being, and to insist a day later that she had slit his throat one cold night in Hell?

-

Needless to say, the Phoenix was not as dead as my owner had hoped. She was simply regenerating, guarded and healed by the Doctor, but very much aware of the brutes that intended to desecrate her corpse to forge engines of murder. She was most displeased.

The expedition burned.

The Doctor’s actions up until that point were only ever about delaying the expedition until either they grew a conscience or the regeneration was complete. The Doctor’s last words to them an explanation of why she was going to let her friend kill them all.

Except for me.

The Phoenix’s fire didn’t touch me. When the light had receded to the point that I could see again, and all that was left of my owners were their charred bones and ashes, I saw the Phoenix as a sparrow garbed in a halo of sunlight, politely waiting for me to recover. She offered me a polite chirp and gave the Doctor a nuzzle goodbye, before she flew off: seeking her own adventures.

Leaving me with the Doctor.

“Blake”

The Doctor’s comment caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure what I expected the Doctor to say, but it wasn’t that.

“W-What?”

“I think Sophie Blake would be a beautiful name for you, my dear. Would you like it?”

To this day, I still cannot describe what I felt then. My world had been turned upside down, and a thousand feelings that I could not put a name to grew from the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing to a storm’s whirlwind. Without my knowledge, my face had broken into a smile. My eyes were filled with tears, but I could find no sadness to justify them. When I spoke, it took me a moment to place the tremble in my voice as coming from a blooming, thirsty happiness:

“Yes! I- I would like that!”

“Well Sophie, if you want, you could come travelling with me, and we could find a home for you.”

And I wasn’t going to say no was I?

-

The Doctor’s ship appeared small: a capsule or glorified box that should have carried a single pilot. Upon walking through the doors, it became so big that I couldn’t really think of it as a ship. Bright light streamed down from above, but most of it was caught in the canopy of a great tree that stood at the centre of a meadow of ferns. More lights like those of fireflies lit up along the branches and underneath the tree’s bark, a part of me suggesting that they were circuits of some kind whilst my eyes insisted that they were too organic to be anything like that. Mirrors were strung across the tree’s trunk like ritual offerings, whilst at waist level ancient consoles covered in ivy rested against the trunk. Moving my attention to the edge of the meadow, I saw a circular stone staircase coated with moss and vines, whilst the meadow’s end was marked with the shapes of machinery covered in ivy. Something that was once a machine that had hatched something alive.

For all the Doctor had talked about finding a new home for me on her travels, I knew the moment I stepped aboard her ship that I had found where I wanted to live. And I hadn’t yet seen all of her ship. For on the first night, she took me downstairs: the meadow replaced with a mansion furnished with ebony wood. A brisk walk down a gallery of landscape paintings (mountains and storms, violent seas and howling chasms) and we reached my room. Upon a four post bed fit for a king, I was granted the most peaceful rest I had ever had in my life.

On the first day and second night, I woke to the Doctor bringing me freshly baked scones with cream and jam, before the Doctor took me down to the library-catacombs beneath the ship’s mansion: explaining how her ship “reinterprets” the wood of the great tree into the furnishings of the mansion and the pages of the endless number of books. On the second day and third night, the Doctor took me on a camping trip to the room above the great tree. Under a sky lit by a clockwork sun, in a field that did not seem to have an end, we set up a great tent that the Doctor insisted she had stolen from Attila the Hun.

And on the third day, after making me breakfast again the Doctor said she wanted to explore the world outside her ship once again, and would be honoured if I was to accompany her. I was going to burst into a “yes”, but stopped part way through. Doubt had slithered into my mind: my eyes flashed over the stitching over my body and I became only too aware of the heaving pistons I had instead of a heart.

The “yes” became a “Would I be... noticed out there?”

“Well my dear, I’d say you can pass as a human if that would help.” The Doctor’s composure softened and her eyes warmed as she spoke. It helped me...

But then the doubts came back. When I was last outside the Doctor’s ship I was an ugly little object, a thing. I knew what happened to those ugly little objects that couldn’t fit in, and though I knew that the Doctor would keep me safe, but... but... but...

“Sophie, look at me”

And I looked, really looked, at the Doctor. I’m not sure I have the words to describe what I saw. She had taken off her illusion of humanity like one would take off a coat, and her history was opening before me like a flower opening in full bloom. In the dimensions and depths where she once stood, I saw her myriad origins spread like roots into history’s soil, a thousand futures blooming and so many faces budding across her history: a goblin faced man in a leather jacket; a wide-eyed, grinning cat dressed in humanity and a long scarf; so many more. Except no! That’s not right either: her history was non-linear, with futures intersecting with and coming before her pasts, never overwriting but always impacting and creating more and more. A creeping, crawling chaos spreading ivy-like over the structure of history, and I swear she was smiling at me.

“My dear, you look at yourself, and see a monster. You think that those fools outside will hate you if they understand what you are. I will not lie, that may happen. But if they understood what I was, then they would be driven to madness.” The Doctor reached out her (their?) hand (hands?) and gently cupped my cheek. “You may be a monster, but I don’t think that matters. That just means that we can go outside and be monsters together.”

-

Beside an oasis somewhere between Jerusalem and the Sinai (the Doctor could never remember precisely where) there was a village. Its people were armed, for the distinction between soldier and civilian was a luxury that couldn’t be afforded in those days, but hoped for a life of peace: growing their crops with the waters of the oasis and working metal for the nomads of the desert.

It is here, under the dim, yet brilliant, howling light of thousand distant burning stars and in the biting cold air of a desert night, that the gates of the Doctor’s ship opened. It is here that the Doctor emerged, her illusion of humanity back in place and dressed in a long, flowing green tunic fastened above her waist with a girdle of brass ivy. And it is here, that we were offered hospitality in the house of Sheikh Nazim

The Doctor said she had met Nazim “every now and then, over the course of several faces”, and whilst Nazim did recognise her, she never actually said how they met. When I asked about Nazim, she said that once upon a time, there was a scholar from a long line of scholars, who had four sons. The oldest three followed in their father’s foot steps, becoming physicians and astronomers and functionaries of the courts.

The fourth son, though training as a doctor, found his passions running hotter. He joined the nomads of the desert, following them through war and peace, bounty and famine. He had fought against countless different foes, listened at the feet of the Sufi ascetics and holy men, and at night he tried his hand at poetry in front of whoever would listen; all in the name of finding love and glory. He didn’t find the first, but perhaps he found the second. For one day, the nomads he was travelling with came upon a village taken by a pestilence. And those same passions that sent Nazim off into the desert now stirred once again, this time telling him to stay and try his hardest as a doctor to help these people.

And so he did. He saved who he could, and comforted those he couldn’t, and before long found that he had settled in this village and couldn’t think of living anywhere else. He became a teacher, an elder, a sheikh, and extended the hospitality of his house to all manner of travellers: to the nomad and the frank, to the pilgrim and the mercenary. And even to us.

-

“... you know how one animal might bare its throat to another in order to demonstrate that it means no harm? Think of the salt we ate as a symbolic version of that my dear: it’s about allowing your host a degree of power over you to show that they can trust you.”

Nazim's house was a building of sun-baked brick surrounding a courtyard, and the room he entertained his guests in had a wall opening onto this courtyard. The sensual chill of the night’s air was blown in, mixing with the heat of a crackling, dancing fire and the scent of garlic and lemon, almonds and dates. The guests sat upon rugs and cushions, their plates of spiced and fried mutton carried by low benches. Across from us were a group of Frankish pilgrims, their tunics turned off-white by the desert. Opposite the courtyard, surrounded by grey and white bearded nomads discussing their old glories, was Nazim himself- garbed in the light green robes he used for prayer. And beside me, explaining the importance and intricacies of hospitality, was the Doctor. I wasn’t sceptical, that would imply aggression that I didn’t have then, but I had my doubts.

“But... why do we need to bare our throats?”

“Well, not so much for us, but many of Nazim’s guests may have fought against him not long ago. In fact,” the Doctor said, shifting her eyes across the room, “I think I spot a knight among those Franks. The third crusade has not long gone, and there’s a good chance he was Nazim’s enemy back then.”

“Why would someone do this for an enemy?”

“Being someone’s enemy is a little more complicated in the middle ages my dear, and especially in this land. The universe is aggressively hostile to life, and though the desert is not quite the vacuum of space, the cold of Mondas or the fires of Mercury, the fact that the environment could roll over and kill you in its sleep is... alarmingly obvious. Compared to that, as long as you can trust someone to some degree, little things like being hated enemies that want to butcher each other rather pales in comparison.”

The Doctor spoke with the hint of a chuckle in her voice. I didn’t respond: the explanation made sense, but I was expecting a little more. Something must have informed the Doctor of my disappointment, because she started again:

“Well, its also a form of wealth. Until industry and modernity and all that, material wealth didn’t accumulate in the same way. In a lot of places, wealth was more measured by how many people were willing to follow you; the size and power of your family; the number of people who considered you a friend; even the favours you were owed. Give a man a loaf of bread and a roof over his head for one night, and he might help you in the future. Entire economies were built out of that sort of thing don’t you know.”

The Doctor nodded with the smugness of a child who had learned something the adults didn’t know and was only too happy to show it off. I tried to restrain a chuckle at her attitude, but failed miserably. With hindsight, I think a visit to a society built on favours and friendships was what I needed, and I was enjoying myself.

Then some idiot had to start poisoning people.

-

The Doctor was standing to tell a story to the whole room when it happened; her voice booming a tale of two peoples stuck in eternal war, of a twisted alchemist who desired power above that of God and of the army of hateful homunculi he created. She had just got to the part where a grinning djinn sent by the City of Brass tried to talk the alchemist out of his decision when one of the pilgrims collapsed into a sweating, heaving pile.

Another moment, and the pilgrim was dead. A pause.

I’m not sure I can put into words precisely what happened next: there was a blur as several things happened at once. The pilgrim the Doctor thought was a knight drew his sword and advanced on Nazim. Several other pilgrims followed his lead. The old nomads, kept fighting fit by their life in the desert, drew their own swords and prepared to defend their friend. The Doctor had placed herself in front of the knight and was trying to talk him down.

“Out of the way,” The knight had enough patience to keep his voice steady, but it was obviously running out. “I shall have the Saracen’s head.”

If the Doctor was intimidated, she didn’t show it. Her reply was stern, her usually amiable voice filled with steel in a way that belied the fact that she was, to my knowledge, completely unarmed.

“Think about it: if Nazim wanted you dead, why didn’t he poison you all? Or slash your throats in your sleep? Or not lend you shelter, and just let you die in the desert. There is a poisoner, but I know Nazim is an honourable man. You can see sense and work with me to find the real poisoner, or strike me down to kill an innocent man. Either way I have no intention of moving.”

I think the knight paused to consider this, and was probably lowering his sword. However, I wasn’t watching him at this point. For another one of the Frankish pilgrims had my attention. In the blur, he had started running off into the courtyard, where the other pilgrims had stood their ground. Perhaps on its own, that wouldn’t be a warning sign, but the crossbow he was holding was. Small, concealable, yet clearly with some power. I may have been someone else’s object, but I knew enough about the games of power my owner’s would play to recognise an assassin’s weapon when I saw one.

Moreover, it was not pointing at Nazim, who the Franks presumably thought poisoned their fellow pilgrim, but at the unarmed Doctor.

My liberator.

My first friend.

My Doctor.

I saw red.

I moved quicker than I thought possible, charging across the room and slamming hard into the assassin, my pistons beating like a war drum. One hand crushed the assassin’s wrist as his crossbow fired wildly into the empty air, the other hand squeezed around his throat. I think the Doctor made a quip about her friend having found the poisoner for them, but I didn’t hear it. I was desperately trying to speak, trying to find the right words, trying to explain myself. Trying to say that this man was holding an assassin’s weapon, that he started escaping like he knew the violence would break out, that he was about to kill my only friend.

I don’t think any of that came out, my attempts to shout and reason drowned by desperation and tears, but I do know that the Doctor understood. The next thing I knew she had embraced me in a hug, and my desperation and tears were drained away. When the Doctor pulled away, the concern in her expression faded as she saw that I was calm. It was replaced with a slight, cheeky smile.

“I think you can put him down now”

The assassin’s feet weren’t touching the ground, his good hand clawing at my arm as his eyes bulged from panic and lack of air. Momentarily embarrassed at the Doctor’s comment, I let go of the assassin’s throat, leaving him on the floor gasping for air.

At this point, Nazim started clapping in applause. I only just noticed that we had an audience: the pilgrims and nomads united in not quite believing what they were seeing. In that moment however, Nazim had swayed them into being impressed at what they were seeing, as they joined in.

-

During the celebration that followed, the knight would fill in the gaps in what happened. The poisoner was a servant of a rival of his, and it seems that the rival would rather dishonourably have a servant assassinate someone than deal with his enemy himself. The wrong person ate the poison, causing the initial clash, but when the Doctor stopped it in its tracks the assassin must have decided to kill her and hope that angered Nazim into killing the pilgrims.

It did not come to that, for which all were grateful to me. The lack of a massacre and an impressive sight had become a reason to celebrate. An evening meal had become an impromptu feast; entertainment came as Nazim challenged the knight to a friendly wrestling match in the courtyard, with many more following their example. Together we all sang and clapped and laughed. My deed was exaggerated in tale and poem told that evening, until apparently I had the strength of a hundred men and could smell the poison on the assassin’s hand: made into a fairy tale before my very eyes.

Yet, though I could be embarrassed, I could not bring myself to object.

My passion never died down from the moment I had held the poisoner’s throat, merely changed form. My anger became excited glee, and looking into the Doctor’s eyes my glee became... something else.

When the Doctor asked, with the celebration winding down and Nazim’s guests having feasted themselves into near slumber, if I would like to return to her ship I spotted an invitation to something more.

And needless to say, I did not decline.

-

After that? We travelled far and wide.

We followed the time winds to the casino ships of Styx, where demons gamble over territory in the bayou of collapsed time and decaying dimensions.

We sailed with the Norsemen, joining them in their quest to bury the bones of their dead god.

In the depths of space we visited the Cloud of Petals, a land of mists and starlight and the shade of plants grown to great size and alien shape, and danced together in microgravity.

I could have gone on, never remembering my old life outside of the darkest nightmare. Except... I met someone who made me confront it. Not intentionally of course, as I understand it they only had good intentions, yet earlier in their history were prone to fighting against the Doctor.

We met these people whilst travelling to California in the mid 21st century, and what an odd century that was. Speaking in bad faith among the nomads and Franks Nazim knew or the Norseman the Doctor and I met would result in a ruined conversation if they had the luxury of patience, or blade against one’s throat if they didn’t, yet in this strange century such behaviour is assumed and even indulged.

As such, perhaps it is unsurprising that is in this century that the Doctor had located a man there who had noticed the growing number of homeless, and had decided to open “work homes” where they could be taken off the streets and made to work in his factories.

For their own good, apparently.

The Doctor had rather hoped to launch a small rebellion there, only to find that someone else had solved the problem for her. Our initial exploration of the labour house found it empty of enslaved homeless people and indeed anyone else, with the factory attached to it being automated enough to not need human help.

Confused, the Doctor bluffed and befuddled our way into the head office. She was taken aback when we were eventually confronted not by some slightly dull head of security demanding answers of some sort, but by a tall man built from glittering metal who, in a sing-song lullaby voice, offered us some tea and a tour of their time vessel.

-

I don’t recall precisely when I asked the Doctor what the cybermen were, or even if she told me this story before I met them and I simply misremembered asking the Doctor about it. That said, I do remember what she told me. She said that once upon a time, the planet Earth had a twin, a Land of the Dead. Where Earth orbited safely in the habitable zone of its Sun, its twin flew off into the cold emptiness of space.

Its inhabitants, the Dead, saw their atmosphere whither under the vampiric gaze of the vacuum of space, saw their oceans freeze in bitter cold and boil under the pressure of eldritch radiations. When awake they saw their food stocks dwindle and their children waste away to nothing, when asleep they heard the mutterings and meditations of the horrors consigned to gaps between the stars.

And yet they survived.

In the cthonian darkness, they had grown a horrifying wisdom. With it, they forged new machine bodies for themselves of silver and steel. New bodies that wouldn’t betray them with hunger and sickness and fear, that wouldn’t fall apart from cold or despair, that wouldn’t tire and wouldn’t die. Free from the honey lies of happiness as well as the bitter, betraying sting of love. But even when freed like this their work was not done.

For once they had learned to gaze back across space and time to Earth, the land of the living, they found things were not as they should be. The living, foolish and unenlightened as they were, had plenty yet created poverty, could have been safe yet took to preying on each other, gathered great knowledge yet allowed ignorance to perpetuate.

Watching the living, the dead found concern without fear, caring without warmth. And so, as their logic and wisdom and aesthetic dictated, the dead made it their mission to rescue the living from themselves and the universe.

No matter the cost.

-

Considering their past clashes with the Doctor, the cybermen were surprisingly hospitable hosts. Where the Doctor’s ship felt like the grounds of a mansion, the cyberman vessel reminded me of a steel Avalon: barrow upon barrow where metal warriors not quite living yet not quite dead lay dormant, ready for when the land of the living needs them again.

Given that the cybermen were above most of the needs of the living, their vessel didn’t have a galley for us to talk in, and needless to say their sarcophagus like rooms they had instead of sleeping quarters were not fit for the purpose either. Instead, the Doctor and I ended up talking with a single unit representing the whole of the cybermen in a defunct control room with hastily added chairs and a makeshift table. The tea the lone cyberman made us was about as good as could be expected when made by someone for whom things like taste and drinking and biology had been made redundant, but the effort was appreciated.

As we sipped the tea, the cyberman filled in the gaps in our knowledge here: they were not, as the Doctor may have feared, an invasion force. They had learned that such things weren’t subtle enough to succeed, especially where time travel came into the equation. No, this was a rescue mission: a life boat sent across time and space to work subtly and without disrupting the time line. Those this century had left without a home were the kind of people history never paid attention to, and so their removal would have minimum effects on a time line that were noticeable to the “higher powers”.

From there, the homeless would be offered either a place among the cybermen, or at least the offer of a journey to more civilized century. The Doctor was horrified by the majority having joined the cybermen. As our guide explained in their electric lullaby voice:

“When this unit was human, they lost their home in the floods 10 years earlier, were relocated across the continent by powers that saw only blood to squeeze from a stone-”

_\- the man howled from the ground as his owner activated the shock collar, but didn’t get up. The howl became an even more terrifying silence, as his owner took more of an interest. With a “this one’s done” he moved to pick another object from the pens to carry on the work. I sat in filth, watching from the pens thinking please let it not be me please let it not be me please let it not be me please let it not-_

“-and arrived here without money or family, along with thousands of others like them. They started injecting themselves with opiates to dull the pain. Between the cold, the diseases and the police, they wouldn’t live long enough to see the negative effects. Once the cybermen rescued them, they had seen the lies and horrors of the world, and knew that we had the superior way of surviving it.”

I was trying to listen to the conversation, but the cyberman’s comment had sent me down a nightmare rabbit hole of memory. I had known what they were talking about. I was able to subdue my shaking hands, bite back my ragged breath and keep my bile down in time to hear the Doctor’s concerned response:

“That’s one person. What about everyone else?”

“They were the same. Some had been mutilated by war-”

_\- the eagle screech of the hunting machine lasted long after its victim was no longer screaming. She would be harvested for parts soon enough-_

“-others had been cast aside after having been manipulated into doing the work their masters disdained doing-”

_\- my pale owners were barely paying attention to me when they ordered me to start removing the dead woman’s organs. They shared small talk under a stain glass mobile shade as I toiled under the eye of the purring hunting machine, the smell of blood and piss and death clinging to my nostrils, wondering if they’d bother with the shock collar this time or just order the machine to tear me to pieces-_

“- and the rest? We showed them the future. They saw their world brought to its knees through its own follies, saw the skies turn to poison and the forests to fire and the soil to dust. They watched the Human Exodus: as entire cultures uprooted and packed themselves tightly into whatever desperate ship they could build at the last minute, shivering and terrified in the night between the stars. They saw the beautiful and terrible things those humans left behind became in the dead seas and withered lands, watching as humanity itself became a decadence that could no longer be afforded. They saw the stars die one by one upon a black wind, and watched as all notion of law gave way to the bleak, cold chaos that is the universe’s natural state. And, having seen all this, what else would they have done but join us?”

Perhaps the Doctor had a rebuttal, but her attention had shifted back to me. I could no longer hide the effect my memories were having on me: my body shivered as if in bitter cold and my eyes barely holding back tears from an invisible pain. The cyberman had stopped to look at me, though expressionless their body language looked surprisingly like concern for someone who had given up their emotions.

Another moment and everything clicked together for the Doctor: I knew perfectly well what the cyberman had been talking about. In fact, it hit all too close to home.

“I think it might be best for us to continue this conversation later.” The Doctor’s voice was noticeably more careful as she began addressing the cyberman, who gave a polite nod in response. “Shall we go back home Sophie?”

“No- wait!”

As much as I was in pain, I was not finished here. Addressing the cyberman, I continued:

“If... if someone is hurting you... and those around you... and won’t listen to you... what should you do?”

Honestly, to this day I’m not sure why I asked the cyberman this. Given what I would do next, was I asking for advice from someone who had liberated themselves? Or the opposite: was I looking for an opinion outside of my own? Or was I asking for permission to do what I was already beginning to plan? And if that is the case, why did I think a cyberman would be able to give me it?

Perhaps all of these were in play in one way or another. In any case, the cyberman was able to answer:

“If any seek to harm the cybermen, or those we protect, we have ways of forcing our greater understanding of the world on them. Once we made the man who ran the work homes one of us, he understood perfectly the error of his ways.”

The Doctor shot the cyberman a slight glare at this. It’s a perhaps odd quirk of the Doctor’s moral compass: destroying something that seeks to harm you, or preferably creating the conditions which will cause them to destroy themselves, is natural to the point of being common sense, yet providing mercy to their enemies in the way the cybermen did is horrifying. That said, she knew that arguing with them over this was pointless, and so did not even consider starting.

“And... if that isn’t possible?”

“Then that is a tragedy and a pity, but the survival of the cybermen is paramount. Those that seek to harm us, and can’t be made to understand, must be destroyed.”

-

Once upon a time, there lived a woman made of tin. She was built to serve cruel masters, alongside her many brothers and sisters.

_\- "Are you sure you’re ready to do this? Even if you have unfinished business...”  
“It’s okay Doctor. I’m okay, and I’m ready”-_

She was past from master to master, and lived a sad life. But one day, she met a fairy queen, who decided to free her from her masters.

_\- The servant had paused to catch his breath, but his owner had seen a defiant glare to his eye and decided to use the shock collar to break him. Both were surprised when the shock collar stopped working, when all the power across the towers went off. A moment went by as both realised how the balance of power in the room had shifted-_

The tin woman and the fairy queen had many adventures together, for the two had fallen in love and lived together in the fairy queen’s strange, travelling mansion.

_\- Some servants had been informed of the power going out early, and had planned ahead. Strikes and barricades were formed the second the power died, and two days into the rebellion help arrived. The result of stolen communicators and deals made in places too dark for the owners and hunting machines to see, an army of those banished into the desert marched upon the glass towers-_

And yet the tin woman found that she was still sad. Though the fairy queen had given her freedom and happiness and love, she couldn’t help but think of her brothers and sisters kept in chains, and of those poor souls her masters would make a sport of hunting.

_\- The violence had lulled, a call for peace and mercy having been heeded enough to create a pause. The owners, by and large, decided to do the most civilized thing they could think of, and reactivate the hunting machines to butcher the world until they sat atop it once more-_

One day, the tin woman could not stand it any more. So she talked with her lover, saying that she had to go back to that terrible place, and help her brothers and sisters how ever she could.

_\- One owner was smugly watching the hunting machines filling with power. He was surprised when the machines awoke with a howl and gutted him like a fish. The Doctor had taught me a lot about the finer points of sabotage and oh yes I was putting it to good use-_

And the fairy queen, both understanding but not wanting to see her lover go through the pain of going back to that place again, said she would help any way she could.

_\- The owners surrendered or died, their regime over. Upon great fires the shock collars burned, and under half ruined towers the victors danced to celebrate their new freedom-_

And so, they whispered dreams of freedom into the sleeping ears of the victims of the masters, helping conspiracy upon conspiracy and, when the time was right, they stole the source of the masters’ magic.

_\- “Will they be okay Doctor?”  
“Yes, I think so. They have the technology to keep everyone fed, and are eager to transform into something better and new. I expect they’ll do fine.”-_

Their work done, the tin woman once again strode across the universe with her lover the fairy queen, laughing and learning and burning their way across history.

And what a beautiful fire they made together.


End file.
